I have been trying not to write about Donald Trump this week. But it’s hard. What particularly comes to mind is how Trump appears to improvise as he goes. “I’m going to put a tariff on Canadian goods. Actually, I’m not. At least not until 2^nd April.”

Trump's approach could make you think of Alice in Wonderland’s White Queen – “Tariffs tomorrow, tariffs yesterday, but never tariffs today.” When I read this article in The Conversation about right-wing media as improv theatre, I thought, “Yes, that’s not just the media, it’s Trump,” – improv theatre as an interactive process between actor and audience, riffing off each other based on feelings not fact. In political improv, factuality is less important than the compelling nature of the performance, the actors, the big story arc and the aesthetic.

Improvisation is the basis of creativity: “All composers start from improvisation: entire compositions don't spring fully formed from their brains.” Improvisation is the spark from which music, or written works, or art pieces, are formed; however there’s a very large dollop of work alongside the inspiration. The quote “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration,” is not without basis.

That necessary work comes with structure – while the original inspiration may be largely unstructured (although it is by necessity influenced by the structure of an individual’s brain, the structure and practices of their family, the values and behaviours of their society), the forming of a polished creation is a practice learned with time, generally from others.

When I write a song, inspiration comes in the form of a song title, or a concept, or a musical riff. Then I work from the concept to create a song. Here’s an example – I’m writing a song about cat training. The hook is whether I am training the cat, or the cat is training me. That's the spark…then:

• I research and write around the topic of cat training. I discover vets say cats need positive affirmation rather than punishment: "Give them love, don't give them a shove."
• I think about what to put in the chorus as opposed to the verses. I decide the verse is my point of view: "I'm training my cat," and the chorus is the cat’s point of view: "Come on human, open the door."
• I create a first cut of words in the chorus and verses, including enough repetition for the message to become familiar and stick with the listener.
• I improvise a musical riff (a repeated set of notes, to grab the listener) – descending semitones sounding like the miaow of a cat.
• I create a chord framework based on the notes in the musical scale I have chosen.
• I delineate the rhythm of the song based on the numbers of beats in the bar and the speed at which those beats are played.
• Then I iterate the song, trying it out successively more widely to discover what resonates and improve what doesn’t.

The final song will feel familiar to western listeners because I am using a western musical scale with a western time signature. The guitar, voice and cello in the song will harmonise – the different instruments will play notes from the same chords at the same time – because that's the norm for western music. We use dissonance – clashing notes – for specific purposes only. Someone from Bali hearing my music might wonder why I have forgotten to put lovely dissonance in. Someone from India might wonder why I have chosen a scale with so many notes in it. Someone from Africa might think my rhythms are prosaic and simple.

Every form of music has its own set of rules; we become accustomed to hearing music written in those rules and think such music sounds ‘correct’. Even forms of music thought as highly improvisational – jazz, or raga – have their own sets of rules, allowing players to create music in a similar-enough fashion to mesh with each other when playing simultaneously. Musical rules lead us to recognise sound as ‘music’ – we perceive order in the sound. All creative arts are the same – our 'recognition' of art is in recognising how it fits what we currently consider art.